


Holiday Burglars

by somethingsomething



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Established Relationship, F/M, M/M, Multi, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-27
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2018-05-09 17:01:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5548322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somethingsomething/pseuds/somethingsomething
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“There’s someone else in the kitchen,” Angel whispers.  “You have to go check it out.”</i> </p>
<p>
  <i>Darwin, fully awake now, gives her a dry look.  “Is this because I’m bulletproof?”</i>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>There's nothing quite like waking up on the first day of the new year to someone else cooking breakfast in your kitchen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Holiday Burglars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ienablu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ienablu/gifts).



> Merry (Belated, again) Christmas to my favorite enabler! (Even if you are a nerd who didn't tell me what five of your favorite tropes are.)
> 
> Written because when asked what he wanted for Christmas, Ien responded with, "3k of Angel/Alex/Darwin and a trope I like," which sounds really specific until you sit down to write it, and you realize you don't actually know anything about the fanon.
> 
> Written as an unspecified AU for my own sake.

Darwin is standing at the kitchen sink, his hands curled around a coffee cup, when Angel wakes up. She stands in the doorway and rubs the sleep out of her eyes with the cuff of a Henley she stole from Alex months ago. It stopped smelling like him in September.

Darwin turns to look at her. “Hey,” he says softly with a warm smile. “Forecast says nine inches.” He laughs at the face she pulls. “Coffee’s fresh,” he says and turns back to the window.

“Amen,” Angel says. She grabs the mug that says, “You’ve really got to hand it to short people…Because we usually can’t reach it anyway,” and adds enough cream and sugar to her coffee that Darwin will only drink from it in desperation (Alex would be a different story, but for now, she’ll be safe).

Angel goes to stand next to Darwin at the sink. He wraps an arm around her shoulders while she inhales deeply from her mug. Darwin sighs. “Happy New Year,” he says.

Angel sighs through her nose and cuts through the curlicues of steam. “Happy New Year,” she says.

They raise their mugs in a toast when they’re down to the last sips and pour the rest down the drain.

 

The snow is scheduled to fall slow and steady all day, but they take the T to Charles’ anyway. They sit with their fingers threaded together and people watch. There’s something about watching other couples together that makes Angel’s insides prick with jealousy. She rests her head on Darwin’s shoulder and says, “Do you think he’ll call today?”

Darwin hums. “Dunno. Probably a lot of people trying to call their families on New Year’s. He’ll try though.” He rests his head on hers. Angel doesn’t miss the way he checks his phone.

 

Hank answers the door with a flush already riding high on his cheekbones. Angel isn’t exactly surprised; Hank was a lightweight freshman year and didn’t…acclimate the way the rest of them did. He was usually too busy writing his end-of-term papers eight weeks before they were due (Sean still claims that this is not, in any way shape or form, an exaggeration since he, the former roommate, would know).

“Angel! Darwin!” Hank says. “Happy New Year!”

“Hey, man,” Darwin says as they hug.

“How’re you?” Angel asks when it’s her turn.

“So great!” Hank says as he steps back and Angel and Darwin hang up their coats. “The lab just got a new grant for this new microscope and the program it comes with so we’re going to spend a few days training with that, and then–”

Darwin asks Hank more questions, and Angel swears Hank lights up like any of the half-dozen Christmas trees they pass on the way to the kitchen.

“Hey, Sean,” Angel says dryly. Sean grins and waves and keeps pouring at least half of what looks to be a very nice bottle of brandy into the punch bowl. “Typical,” she says as she bumps hips with Sean. He just grins and finishes his pour with a flourish.

Angel’s eyes burn when she takes a sip. “I think we’re finally gonna get Darwin drunk,” she says. Sean high-fives her and ladles out enough punch to fill a pint glass. Angel watches him take the glass to Darwin and laughs at the look he gives the glass, Sean, and then her. Darwin just sighs and gives her a wry smile before toasting her. Angel toasts back. She doesn’t actually think Sean’s recipe will finally meet the limits of Darwin’s mutation, but it’s always fun to try.

“Glad to see you’ve all been helping yourselves to my liquor cabinet,” Charles says from behind them.

There’s a round of “Professor!” and “Happy New Year!” and bright grins all around. Angel feels off-kilter around Charles, sometimes, even two years on. She thinks she always will, even with Charles brushing her hand before filling his own cup. He fills the punch cup halfway before asking for the club soda and topping it.

“I’ve done my share of benders,” he tells Angel in an undertone. “I suspect Mr. Cassidy has used enough liquor to test the limits of even our most stalwart companions.” They both look at Darwin, who’s already drained a quarter of his glass. Angel just laughs and toasts Charles.

“At least I’ll only have one to carry home and tuck into bed,” she says.

“How is Alex?” Charles asks.

Angel sighs. “We were hoping to get a call from him today, but no luck. Darwin and I were hoping you might have a bead on him.”

Charles looks sympathetic and genuine as he says, “I hadn’t thought to check today. As of two days ago he was fine. Missing you and Darwin, but safe.”

Angel smiles. “Thanks, Professor.”

Charles scoffs. “Please,” he says as they move towards the others. “You make me sound so sophisticated.”

Angel can’t help her laugh.

 

They watch the ball drop on TV and toast with champagne. Angel tugs Darwin down for a New Year’s kiss to the hooping and hollering of the boys and other students of Charles’ who had turned up. (No one mentions Erik or Raven. More importantly, no one looks twice at the tiny tree on an end table by the front door decorated with metal ornaments.)

“Take me dancing?” she asks, when they part far enough to talk but not far enough that Angel can’t still feel Darwin’s breath against her skin.

“Of course, baby,” he says. When Angel pulls back a little more, Darwin looks a little like he’s trying to ignore the little voice in the back of his head that’s whispering about New Year’s kisses and strengthening relationships and missing people, too.

Thirty minutes later, they make their excuses and say their thanks and goodbyes. The streets are covered in thick, wet snow. Angel tilts her head back to catch snowflakes on her tongue. Darwin is smiling at her in the light of Charles’ porch lights with snow catching in his hair and on his coat, and Angel’s heart squeezes in her chest.

“Love you,” he says as he wraps an arm around her and tugs her close.

“Love you,” she says.

 

The club is loud and packed. Angel’s toes get stepped on too many times to count, but everyone is too drunk to notice her wings and if they aren’t, it’s too loud for them to comment.

She can forget that Alex isn’t here for an hour or two. She can remember that Darwin is here, he’s still alive, she’s still alive, and that’s good enough for right now. She dances out all of the bad from the past year and dances in all the good that will come. She laughs and kisses Darwin in the middle of the dance floor; she thinks someone cheers, but it doesn’t matter, not today.

Last call comes at three; Angel can still feel the press of Darwin’s body against her own, even as they walk down the street with only their fingertips touching.

Darwin hails them a cab back to their apartment. She sits wedged between the door and Darwin, exhausted and content.

At home, they shower and crawl into bed as fast as they can.

“We should change the sheets tomorrow,” Darwin mumbles into Angel’s hair.

Angel groans. “We should scrub out the kitchen, too. And clean the bathrooms. And the living room.”

“Fuck,” Darwin says. “I’ll vacuum and clean cabinets if you do laundry.”

“Deal. I’ll even throw in making the bed.”

“You’re a woman after my own heart, Angel Salvadore. You should move in. I make a mean French toast, you know.”

Angel laughs and kicks his shin. “I’m not here for the French toast,” she says.

Darwin laughs and kisses her, soft and unhurried. “I know,” he says. “It’s for the fresh ground coffee.”

Angel thinks she might still be laughing when she falls asleep.

 

Angel wakes up long after the sun has risen, warm and content. The smell of coffee sneaks in under the door. She smiles, still half-asleep, and buries her face in her pillow. She stretches when the smell of bacon hits her. And freezes. Darwin is still in the bed next to her.

“Darwin,” she whispers. He mumbles. “Darwin!”

“What, what?” he says, half-sitting up. “I thought I was making breakfast this morning.”

“There’s someone else in the kitchen,” she whispers. “You have to go check it out.”

Darwin, fully awake now, gives her a dry look. “Is this because I’m bulletproof?” He’s already pulling on a sweatshirt and edging out of the bedroom.

“And fireproof.”

There’s silence for a minute then:

“Angel! Angel, baby, it’s okay, come here!”

_Nobody is that happy to see a burglar except for Logan_ , Angel figures. She goes slowly into the kitchen, anyway, just in case Darwin has been hit with some kind of mind control or some other mutation they haven’t seen yet.

It turns out, their burglar got in through the front door, with a key.

It’s Alex, his boots by the table and fatigue jacket hanging on the back of a chair and a spatula in his hand. Darwin has him pressed against the refrigerator door. Angel is pretty sure their objective is enthusiastic “welcome home” kisses, but they’re both grinning too hard.

“You _asshole_ ,” Angel says, but she’s grinning so hard her face is already starting to turn numb. “Is this why you didn’t call yesterday?”

Alex grins at her over Darwin’s shoulder. “Yeah,” he says. Darwin steps to the side just enough for Angel to get her turn at running her hands over Alex’s face and through his hair (he’s _real_ and he’s _here_ and healthy just like Charles said) and kissing him.

“I tried to make it back before midnight, but the flights were held up because of the snow,” Alex says when Angel lets him breathe. “You gotta let me up unless you want the bacon burned.”

Angel and Darwin pout until Alex laughs and gives them each another kiss before turning back to the stove.

Darwin opens the fridge and starts cracking eggs and pouring milk for French toast. Angel stands on her tiptoes to grab coffee mugs and turns to glare when Alex huffs a laugh.

He shakes his head. “Just happy to see you guys,” he says. The looks on Alex and Darwin’s faces make her heart squeeze up again.

“Yeah, well,” she manages, “wish I could say the same about you.”

Alex and Darwin both laugh outright at that. “Nothing’s changed,” Darwin says as he bumps shoulders with Alex. Angel can’t see Alex’s grin, but she can see Darwin match it, and that’s enough. She thinks this squeezed-heart feeling is going to get real old, real fast, as Alex and Darwin kiss over the stove.

Angel pours coffee and tries to add enough cream and sugar that Alex won’t steal her coffee even when he has his own damn cup. Still, she’s stealing kisses and giving Alex and Darwin their coffee when she turns back, and Alex has her mug in hand.

She frowns and pinches Alex’s side. He just laughs and hands back her mug.

 

“How long are you home for?” Darwin asks like an adult, as though Angel hasn’t been trying to play footsie under the kitchen table all through breakfast and Alex isn’t dangling a piece of syrup-drenched bacon above his mouth so it won’t drip over his clothes.

“I fly back out on the seventh. Six whole days in the frozen wasteland of Boston,” Alex says as he leans back in his chair, apparently smug.

Angel rolls her eyes. “Oh fuck off, you’re from Alaska,” she says.

Alex laughs. “Some winters it’s warmer there than here.” Angel just rolls her eyes again.

“Sunday brunch is at Charles’ if you want to go,” Darwin says as he stacks plates in the sink and runs water over them to get the worst of the syrup.

“Yeah,” Alex says, bright and happy. “I could kill for Hank’s eggs Benedict. And, oh God, hash browns that haven’t been cooked in ten gallons of vegetable oil.”

Angel laughs and gets up to climb into Alex’s lap. “Maybe I am glad to see you,” she murmurs.

Alex just grins and pulls her closer.

“Bed, you two,” Darwin says, still miraculously sounding like a fully composed adult.

 

Angel finally manages to drag Alex out of bed and to a dance club his second night back. His eyes practically roll back in his head when he takes the first sips of his beer.

“What!” he says. “I haven’t had something that isn't full of sand in five months.” He cradles his glass to his chest as though Angel might steal it from him. She just makes a gagging motion and sips her martini.

“Aren’t we here to dance?” Darwin asks with a raised eyebrow.

Angel looks from Darwin and Alex and back again. She bites her lip. “I call middle!” she says, and takes both their hands. She thinks Alex makes a wounded noise at being pulled away from his (probably shitty) beer, but the bass is too loud to hear properly. She’ll buy him another one later.

 

They finally manage to clean the apartment on the third day. Not that they’re overly successful – they keep distracting each other and making out against the furniture.

Angel throws the Henleys she and Darwin had been wearing during Alex’s deployment into the first load of laundry. She promptly wrestles Alex into one the second the dryer finishes. He whines about the fabric being too hot, but he doesn’t take it off until the next morning.

 

They spend the fourth day carefully cataloging every new line and ridge on Alex’s body. A circular mark on his bicep from a hastily given tetanus booster. A bumpy line on the outside of his left thigh from a knife he hadn’t noticed. A nick under his jaw from a bar fight.

Darwin doesn’t have any marks from the last five months to show, but Angel does. Alex maps them carefully, like a blind cartographer charting a coastline. There’s the mostly-faded sliver of paler skin on her belly from a mission she’d run for Charles. The pink knot of mostly-new scar on her foot part of her cover from when she’d left a particularly nasty offshoot of the Brotherhood at the end of an undercover assignment. (Erik had learned his lesson; the bullet had cut a clean path.) The swirl of ink on her shoulder that combined their initials.

 

Brunch on the fifth day involves Alex eating his weight in hash browns and eggs Benedict.

After Alex’s tenth exclamation that, seriously Hank this is the greatest thing I’ve ever eaten in my entire _life_ , Hank pretends to wipe a tear from his eye.

“It’s so nice to be appreciated,” he says.

Everyone laughs, and Angel throws her napkin at him. “Nerd,” she says.

 

On the fifth day, it snows again. They watch the snow fall out the living room window, tucked under blankets and against each other.

It stops snowing around 10 in the evening. Alex tugs Angel and Darwin out of the apartment and down into the resident’s courtyard. They come back in too late, cold and wet and breathless.

Angel and Darwin bundle Alex into the middle of the bed. They sleep cuddled together so tightly that Angel loses track of whose limb is whose.

 

Angel wakes up on the morning of the sixth day and does her level best to pretend that it isn’t the 7th. Still, she can feel Alex and Darwin wake up. It’s still dark outside, and no one’s alarm has gone off.

When Alex’s phone does go off, he sighs and reaches over Darwin to turn it off.

“What if you just don’t go back?” Darwin says.

Alex laughs and runs his hands through his hair. “The military doesn’t take very kindly to that,” he says.

Angel snorts. “Fuck the government.”

“Yeah okay, Ms. Resistance Rebel,” Alex says. Angel snorts again.

 

All three of them go to the airport. Angel holds it together right before Alex has to go through security. She manages approximately 0.3 seconds of being normal, definitely-not-involved friends seeing another friend off on deployment before she and Darwin are both burying their noses into Alex’s neck and holding on like their lives depend on it.

“I’m gonna be home before you know it,” Alex says. His voice is thick, and his arms are just as tight around them.

“Yeah, well, don’t get shot,” Angel says, wiping at her eyes. She hates this part, letting someone in and then letting them go again.

“Love you,” Alex says.

“Love you,” Angel says and leans into the hand he rests on her cheek.

“Love you,” Darwin says. His hand comes up to wrap around Alex’s wrist.

“I’ll call when I have time back at base,” Alex says. He shoulders his bag.

“But no news is good news,” Angel and Darwin chorus.

“Yeah, yeah, alright,” Alex says. He smiles. “See you soon.”

Angel and Darwin stand watching long after Alex has moved through security and on to his gate.

Darwin sighs and lifts his arm for Angel to tuck in close. “I cook, you do dishes?”

They turn for the exit. “Only if you don’t cheat and get pizza or decide to use twenty different pots,” Angel says.

“Damn it,” Darwin says.

 

When Alex comes home for good at the end of March, he calls them both from the airport _before_ breaking in.


End file.
